Double-Bass Notebook: Ideas, Tips and Pointers for the Complete Professional brings together a lifetime of insight from esteemed instructor and virtuoso Orin O'Brien. It includes musical examples, intuitive texts, articles, and practical and professional advice on practicing, auditioning, repertoire and more. 96 pages.

To learn bass as efficiently as possible, having the best physical setup is crucial. You
need the right setup for your bass—which a guitar repair person can do for you—and, more
importantly, you should focus on how you position your instrument when you play.

Proper positioning is crucial to your success. You need to feel comfortable and have
access to the entire fingerboard. Your fingers must be able to play their assigned frets
whether you’re playing a four-string, five-string, or six-string bass. You should be able to
slide your left hand up and down the neck easily without running into your torso. Your right
hand needs to have comfortable access to every string whether you’re playing finger-style,
slapping, or using a pick.

Most bassists need to do some experimenting to get the proper position. Change the
length of your guitar strap. Try playing with the neck parallel to the floor as well as with the
headstock raised up. (Read more)

SECRET 18:
STAY ORGANIZED

Creating an Efficient Practice Space

While many bassists are organized about planning the music to be covered in their
practice sessions, they often neglect to plan the physical organization of their practice space.

Most practice experts recommend having one room where you always practice. Within
this practice space, you can designate a specific area to place all the little items that make
playing bass easier. You don’t want to waste time searching for your metronome, tuner,
picks, pencil, mp3 player, sheet music, instrument stand, or music stand. It’s especially
important that you always know where an instrument cable is if you practice with an amp.
The frustration of misplacing just one of these items can be enough to make you simply give
up on practicing for the day.

Some bassists keep these things in their instrument case. Others have a specific shelf,
drawer, table, or bag for this purpose. (Read more)

The mad tribal gathering that is the annual convention of the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) came to Anaheim, California, in late January. The sheer scope and scale of the show, and the crush of music-oriented humanity, are always quite stunning.

Eric actually added this David Bowie transcription before, but wanted to call it out again to honor the late star, and announce Eric's book of Bowie Greatest Hits, Bass Transcriptions. The song is from the 1972 album, "The Rise of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars."

John Falstrom, author of EADG 4, explains the training value of breaking up scales into clusters of three notes.

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